1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns a network centric printing system in which printer maintenance functions are accessed over the network from a printer configuration file. Specifically, the invention accesses a printer configuration file and then builds an HTML page which displays available maintenance functions from the printer configuration file for selection and use by a network user.
2. Incorporation By Reference
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/357,431, entitled “Software Architecture for Cable Television Home Printing”, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/357,433, entitled “Internet-Based Push Printing Over Cable Network”, are each incorporated herein by reference.
3. Description of the Related Art
In a typical network-based system, the network is comprised of at least one server and several computing devices, such as personal computers and workstations, through which network users access and utilize the network servers. In such a system, the network user typically has a printer driver located locally within the personal computer or workstation that is used by the network user. In this manner, when the network user desires to print an image or information from an application, such as a network browser or a word-processing application, the related data is transformed through the printer driver in the network user's computer into print data for printing on the desired printer, regardless of whether the desired printer is located as a peripheral of the network user's computer or is a network printer.
Recently, the implementation of network centric environments has increased, in which a network server is accessed and utilized by a plurality of network users through a simple network device at the location of each network user. For example, a digital cable network provides not only digital cable television services to a home user having a set-top box (STB), but also provides other services to the network user through the STB, such as internet access. In such an environment, the STB is connected to the television of the network user and is also connected to a cable head end (CHE) of the digital cable network. The CHE is used to combine digital cable television services, internet access services and other third-party services for distribution from a server of the CHE to the STBs of the network users who subscribe to the digital cable network. In this manner, a home network user can access and utilize data image files from the server at the cable head end and also may access and utilize files from various locations on the internet via a browser in the STB.
It is desirable for a home user of a digital cable network to have the capability to print images to a printer located within the home of the home user and connected to the STB of the home user. Such printing systems are described in U.S. application Ser. No. 09/357,431, entitled “Software Architecture for Cable Television Home Printing”, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/357,433, entitled “Internet-Based Push Printing Over Cable Network”. These applications describe a digital cable network which provides the ability of a server in the CHE to prepare and send print data from the CHE to the STB of the home user for printing on a printer which is connected to the STB. For example, the print data prepared at the CHE may represent a weekly subscription to specific information of interest to the home user wherein the CHE collects the information from a third party, such as a web site on the internet, and then prepares a print job containing print data by using a printer driver located in the CHE. The utilized printer driver corresponds to the type of printer located in the network user's home. In the alternative, the print data may represent information from a third party, such as an advertisement from a store, in which the print job is initiated by the third party, prepared by the CHE using the appropriate printer driver, and sent to the home network user's printer for printing.
It can be appreciated that frequent use of the network user's printer may result in degradation of the print quality of the printer if printer maintenance is not performed to return the printer to a good printing condition. Typical maintenance of a printer, such as an ink jet printer, includes cleaning of the print heads, the printing of a test page to test the print quality condition, the performance of a nozzle check to ensure that the nozzles are performing correctly, and a cleaning of the rollers. In a conventional network environment in which the network user accesses the network server via a personal computer, the network user can access the printer maintenance commands supported by the printer driver for the network user's printer through a graphic user interface supported by the printer driver. For example, the network user may use a pointing device, such as a mouse, to click on an icon corresponding to the printer, whereupon the printer driver supports the display of a printer maintenance window in which the network user can select one of several commands corresponding to each of the available printer maintenance functions.
In a network centric environment, such as a digital cable network, the network device utilized by the network user, such as a set-top box (STB), typically has limited hardware resources available to support execution of significant, complex software programs. For example, an STB has a limited amount of memory available that is less than the amount typically found in a personal computer. Accordingly, an STB is unable to load and execute a conventional printer driver having graphic user interface capabilities. This presents a problem in network centric environments that support printing services. For example, in a digital cable network system, an appropriate printer driver for each network user's printer on the network is located in the server of the CHE of the digital cable network. As discussed above, the printer driver is utilized by the CHE to generate a print job, either at the request of the network user or of a third party, and to send the print job down to the set-top box of the network user for printing on the printer connected to the set-top box. Accordingly, printers residing on the digital cable network need to be managed both by the network administrator at the cable head end and by each corresponding network user at the location of the printer.
Unfortunately, the printer drivers for all of the possible types of printers supported by the digital cable network tend to vary greatly in size, functionality and format. Therefore, the use of a common software program in the CHE server to provide a graphic user interface for all printer drivers to network users, including network administrators, would be very complex and cumbersome.
Therefore, a printing system is desired for network centric environments in which a common printer maintenance scheme is utilized for allowing both the network administrator and the printer owners to access printer maintenance functions for maintaining the printer of each network user in a good printing condition, wherein the scheme is general enough to support many different types of printers. It is also desirable that the common printer maintenance scheme should not have to be modified every time a new type of printer is added to the digital cable network. In addition, the scheme should be easy to use by a network user via a network device having limited resources, such as a set-top box.